Improving medical compliance among the elderly is one of the most pressing issues facing those medical professionals treating the elderly. Geriatric depression is one of the most important predictors of poor medical compliance. However, depression among elders is still overlooked by many, including healthcare professionals. African American elders are at particularly high risk for having their depression be undetected and untreated by medical professionals. The focus of the proposed project is consistent with the purposes of investigating interventions to improve interactions between elders and their healthcare providers. The goal of the project is to determine the efficacy of using medical paraprofessionals for early detection of depression in order to increase medical compliance and improve the health status of African American elderly. We recently documented that a training program can be effective in increasing medical paraprofessionals knowledge of geriatric depression. The proposed project will expand on these findings by comparing knowledge in the treatment and comparison groups, by determining if increased knowledge leads to appropriate referrals for treatment for depression and by determining if those referrals have an effect on the health status of elderly who ultimately receive treatment for depression. Health care paraprofessionals will be randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The intervention group will receive extensive training regarding geriatric depression. The efficacy of the prograna will be determined by comparing participants' scores on a knowledge assessment instrument, as well as the frequency of appropriate notification of depression symptoms to medical supervisors.